A 66-year-old gun enthusiast accused of suggesting the murder of Spain’s Socialist prime minister “to force a change in the political life of the country” has told a court he was never serious about the assassination, blaming his words on too much wine, brandy and bravado.
Manuel Murillo, a security guard from Terrassa in Catalonia, could face 18 and a half years in prison if convicted of proposing the murder of Pedro Sánchez and of possessing illegal weapons and ammunition.
Murillo was arrested in September 2018 after police were alerted to the messages he had shared with a rightwing, nationalist WhatsApp group.
He told its members he was angry about the Sánchez government’s plans to exhume General Franco from his tomb outside Madrid, saying: “We can’t let them humiliate the generalísimo … It’s their revenge for losing the [Spanish civil] war.”
Murillo added: “If needs be, I’ll head off armed and I’ll sit on Franco’s tomb and shoot them if they come near me. If they touch Franco I suggest there be another war for our honour.”
He later told the group that envisaged a “national uprising” to overthrow the Socialist government and said it would be a bit like Operation Valkyrie, the failed attempt to kill Hitler in 1944.
“I’m a marksman and with one good shot, Sánchez is done for before all of Spain goes down,” he said. “There wouldn’t need to be any wars.”
Murillo also said the prime minister should “be hunted like a deer and his head put over the mantlepiece”, adding: “So many hunters in Spain and none of them has balls. All they do is kill poor animals that don’t destroy Spain, which is why this one needs hunting.”
Appearing on Tuesday at Spain’s highest criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional, Murillo said he had been overworked and was drinking heavily at the time he sent the messages.
“I felt like a hero, like Rambo, and I said things like this to save Spain,” he said.
Asked about the messages threatening the life of the prime minister, the defendant said he had been drinking wine and orujo and didn’t remember sending them.
“I’ve never been the kind of man to do anything,” Murillo said. “If I said it, it’s because I was daydreaming and I don’t know why I said it … I was living alone and I was having a tough time with the loneliness, and we joked about it [in the WhatsApp group] …
“I never really intended to do it and I don’t know what was going through my mind as I’m not a killer. But I might have said it because I was drunk. All this is because I was drunk. I was like those English poets who used to get drunk so they could write.”
Police officers who searched Murillo’s car and home after his arrest found a pistol, a carbine, several revolvers and an assault rifle. They also seized explosives and a large amount of ammunition.
The case continues.
